چکیده انگلیسی

This paper presents a study of one public–private partnership in e-government in Sweden, Bygga Villa, that involved 16 organizations from academia, government, and industry to develop an innovative internet portal for the private construction industry. Our research purpose was to answer (1) What are the challenges to developing collective competence in public–private partnerships? and (2) How can these challenges be overcome to achieve project success? We found that the potential for conflict due to differing goals, resource scarcity, and interdependence of tasks was the greatest challenge for Bygga Villa’s ability to develop collective competence while the partnership overcame this challenge through (1) co-developing a clear project charter, (2) recruiting a project leader with strong knowledge broker skills, (3) conducting joint problem-solving tasks using boundary objects, and (4) ensuring an understanding of the “big picture” through continuous open and balanced communication. Moreover, the project was successful due to members’ ability to embrace conflict and turn it into creative conflict through dialogue while ensuring a high level of project satisfaction by the partnership’s individual members.

مقدمه انگلیسی

Projects as a means to organize operations have become increasingly widespread in both the public and private sectors. Yet project-based organizations face many challenges to project effectiveness. Since they are unique, goal-oriented systems where technical, procedural, organizational, and human elements are integrated, they are consequently complex in their nature [1]. All the elements of the system need to be in balance since they are parts of a whole with each part affecting the others through interdependent relationships. A large number of projects are cross-sectoral and include partners from multiple organizations. One such collaboration is commonly referred to as public–private partnerships or PPPs. These inter-organizational project-based organizations consist of members from both the public and private sectors and are “cooperation[s] between public and private actors with a durable character in which actors develop mutual products and/or services and in which risk, costs, and benefits are shared” [2]. PPP projects are generally dispersed in their nature as partners are located in different organizations and in various geographical locations. In addition, partners encounter specific issues such as variability in team composition and multiple relationships between the partners [3], further increasing the number of challenges for project effectiveness.
Although public–private partnerships have existed for centuries, it is only within the past two decades that the number has significantly increased within Europe and across the globe [4]. To date, research on PPPs has tended to focus on those producing more tangible results, such as increasing the supply of regional housing or improving access to public medicine. However, there are a growing number of public–private partnerships that focus on the creation of more intangible results, such as the promotion of sustainable growth and regional competitiveness. Despite the growing interest and increasing resources invested in this type of public–private partnership, they have received surprisingly little attention from researchers and practitioners [5].
To address the above, we conducted a case study of one complex public–private partnership, Bygga Villa1 in Sweden. This PPP involved 16 organizations from academia, government, and industry with the purpose of developing an innovative internet portal for “all information and services that are required for ‘The Andersson Family’ to effectively plan, build, and live in their house”.2 Using an abductive research process, we focused on two research questions: (1) What are the challenges to developing collective competence in public–private partnerships? and (2) How can these challenges be overcome to achieve project success? To anticipate the results, we found that the potential for conflict due to differing goals, resource scarcity, and interdependence of tasks was the greatest challenge for Bygga Villa’s ability to develop a collective competence. Bygga Villa was able to overcome this challenge primarily through (1) co-developing a clear project charter, (2) recruiting a project leader with strong knowledge broker skills, (3) conducting joint problem-solving tasks using boundary objects, and (4) ensuring an understanding of the “big picture” through continuous open and balanced communication. Moreover, the project facilitated collective competence management in which conflict was turned into creative conflict through dialogue and ensuring the satisfaction of the individual project member’s goals to the best degree possible. After a discussion of the above, we conclude the article with a discussion of the implications for practitioners and limitations.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

In summary, we found that the potential for conflict due to differing goals, resource scarcity, and interdependence of tasks was the greatest challenge for Bygga Villa’s ability to develop collective competence. The project overcame this challenge primarily through (1) co-developing a clear project charter, (2) recruiting a project leader with strong knowledge broker skills, (3) conducting joint problem-solving tasks using boundary objects, and (4) ensuring an understanding of the “big picture” through continuous open and balanced communication. However, after further analysis and reflection we found that the project also was adept at collective competence management for three reasons. First, the general attitude towards conflict by the project’s members was more of a positive one than of a negative one – choosing not to view conflict as something detrimental and to be avoided. They focused on keeping conflict at the task level and not at the relationship level [43]. Project members embraced conflict and viewed the differences among participants as something to be leveraged to produce innovative, synergistic solutions [44]. In this manner, they were able to continuously solve problems effectively, turning conflict into creative conflict that further enabling them to develop collective competence.
Secondly, we found that several of the project’s members including the project leader were quite proficient in the skill of dialogue, thus enabling the development of collective competence. As problem-solving and conflict resolution are becoming increasingly important in our complex world, the skill of dialogue is becoming one of the most fundamental skills [45]. Proponents of dialogue claim that it helps groups to reach higher levels of consciousness and thus be more creative and more effective, and at Bygga Villa, we saw several aspects of dialogue throughout the project. Members were treated as equally as possible and the general feeling was that “we are all in this together on an equal basis”. For example, in the beginning of the project, the project was open to anyone who wanted to join, and then those who wanted to join were allowed ‘‘air time’’ to establish their identity and legitimacy in the group. Also, through focusing on the thinking process and how perceptions and cognitions were performed by past experiences, the project members were able to frame problems together in a common way, making it easier to deal with the problems constructively and creatively in the group. This further facilitated the project’s ability to turn conflict into creative conflict.
Finally, our research led us to an investigation of what project success is and its relationship with collective competence. Research on partnerships has identified a second subjective component of project success: the satisfaction of the individual project stakeholders’ needs, in addition to the more traditional objective components of project success: meeting the time, cost, and quality objectives of the project as well as the quality of the project management process [46]. At Bygga Villa, we found that not only did the members focus on fulfilling the objective components of project success but that considerable focus was also placed on ensuring that the individual project members were satisfied with the level that the project fulfilled their specific individual goals, the subjective component. This dual focus further facilitated the development of collective competence within the project.